John Muir organizes the Sierra Club in…
May 1892 CE
The Sierra Club immediately opposes efforts to reduce Yosemite National Park by half, and begins holding educational and scientific meetings.
Journalist Robert Underwood Johnson had worked with John Muir on the successful campaign to create a large Yosemite National Park surrounding the much smaller state park which had been created in 1864.
This campaign had succeeded in 1890.
As early as 1889, Johnson had encouraged Muir to form an "association" to help protect the Sierra Nevada, and preliminary meetings were held to plan the group.
Others involved in the early planning included artist William Keith, Willis Linn Jepson, Willard Drake Johnson, Joseph LeConte and David Starr Jordan.
In May 1892, a group of professors from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University help Muir and attorney Warren Olney launch the new organization modeled after the eastern Appalachian Mountain Club.
The Sierra Club's charter members elect Muir president, an office he will hold until his death in 1914.
The Club's first goals include establishing Glacier and Mount Rainier national parks, persuading the California legislature to give Yosemite Valley to the U.S. federal government, and preserving California's coastal redwoods.
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